This Chennai band, Many Things, is all about jazz, blues and beyond

Maarten Visser during the concert
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

When jazz saxophonist, Maarten Visser, bass guitarist and national award-winning composer Aravind Murali, heavy metal drummer and mridangam player, Manu Krishnan, got together about three years back, they talked about forming a band “with no boundaries”. 

Aravind says, “We talked about ‘many things’ but due to the pandemic nothing happened for two years till January 2022 when we decided to form a band.“ They decided to call it Many Things.

“We decided to call it that since each one of our compositions is a ‘Thing’. Our songs are called
‘Thing 1’ , ‘Thing 2’ , ‘Thing 3’ , ‘A Tricky Thing’, ‘Swing Thing’,” he adds with a wry smile. 

The band treads the fine line between premeditation and improvisation, and in a short span of 10 months, they have garnered national attention. The band was recently invited to perform at the Indo German Jazz Week in Bangalore along with international jazz acts like the Klaus Graf Quartet, Germany, the Arifa Quartet from the Netherlands and so on.

Indian pianist-composer Aman Mahajan says, “‘The music of ‘Many Things’ is immersive and tastefully crafted. They have a hybrid sound spanning classical music, jazz, funk, the blues and beyond.”

The band’s diverse voices lend to the unique flavour that each member brings to the table.

Take for instance Maarten Visser, an alumna of Brabants Conservatorium in Holland specialising in contemporary improvised music. He later came to Chennai in 1998 to study Carnatic music and collaborated with dancer Padmini Chettur in 2000.

“As there are no lyrics and no language, we try to explain ideas in sound so that a composition becomes a many storied structure,” says Maarten, about their compositions.

Manu Krishnan, on the other hand, started learning Carnatic music at the age of five from his Carnatic singer-father. He learnt mridangam from TR Rajamani, son of the legendary Palghat Mani Iyer. By the time he was 14, he played drums and went on to major in drums from the Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music.

“The basic shell of the song is written by Maarten. Then we all work together to come to an arrangement which we all can agree upon,” explains Manu, who is currently doing his Masters in Carnatic Music from Madras University.

Aravind says, ”Our music is a bit like conceptual art. The idea behind it is just as important as the music itself. We try to capture an emotion, concept, idea or a scene through sound and even inside one song there could be varied moods or emotions depending on the picture we’re trying to paint.”

The band is now in the process of recording its debut album, which will release in early 2023.

Many Things will perform songs from its upcoming album at the Madras Jazz Festival on December 16 at Gears and Garages